


Retracing Steps

by cecilkirk



Series: fic prompts [13]
Category: Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Angst, M/M, Post-Split, cape town, fight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-20
Updated: 2016-02-20
Packaged: 2018-05-22 07:00:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6069675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cecilkirk/pseuds/cecilkirk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Time doesn't always take the pain away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Retracing Steps

There was something unique about retracing old steps. You couldn’t quite relive the life you had, but you can rewatch it. All of it can pass in front of your eyes, but now you have no say in how it goes. Forced to watch your life as a movie…sometimes, that mixture of pain and nostalgia was healthy.

Ryan hoped this would be enough of both to reach that level of purification.

He thinks of the last time he was here, and the first memory is laughter. It’s loud, ubiquitous, interminable. All he can see is smiles and friends, and all he can feel is the kind of brimming joy that comes with living on the top of one’s dream, looking down at reality between his toes.

He thinks of family, he thinks of friends, but mostly, he thinks of him.

And what made Ryan think rewalking this path would bring him back? What if this city hadn’t been so alluring to him, so deeply nailed into his memory like it had in Ryan’s? What if—

Ryan’s fingers nearly knot around the guitar strings he’s tuning, a clumsy action from a stuttering mind.

–what if Brendon didn’t find this ground worth a second glance?

Ryan swallows, grits his teeth. That was all a possibility. It wasn’t as impossible as everything they’d left behind here.

Ryan pictures Brendon arriving by plane, finding his eyes in the crowd…

There’s a rising feeling in his chest, and he desperately wants it to be hope.

Maybe it was equally as impossible.

Ryan walks out onto the empty stage facing an empty crowd, and the nostalgia is almost crippling.

He remembers that night so well; it’s all so ungodly clear. It all rushes back like an affront and suddenly his chest aches and his throat is tight and he has to think about something else, anything else—

And he chooses to think about love.

_Fuck._

He chooses to think about change instead, and his throat loosens.

Something about standing here, in this city, on this stage, and thinking about change feels unholy, like he’s breaking some tacit rule. By juxtaposition, everything is different: he’s newly single, he’s about to sing different words, and he’s even chopped off all his damned hair.

It was change. It was an upset in routine, but he needed it. And even thought all those changes had been major, they had only felt superficial, like he’d done them for approval, ostensibly significant to catch someone’s eyes, to make that person aware of how he’d change, and maybe the change would be great enough to make him nostalgic, bring him back—

Ryan clears his throat, brusquely walks off the stage.

Maybe, maybe, maybe. Maybe it was just as impossible.

He doesn’t remember the show beginning, because his mind is elsewhere, floating in ruts, making them deeper. The same handful of thoughts over and over and _over_ —

Until they’re halted completely.

The lyrics die in his throat, his fingers freeze.

 _Fuck_.

His cheeks burn, not at the thought of how his bandmates would react, not at the idea of making a fool of himself in front of a crowd, but at the reality.  The _impossibility._

It had all come to life. Everything had ended because of those brown eyes, buried in a sea of bodies.

Ryan’s hands feel a week away, and no words come to him—none of his or anyone’s at all.

He hears his breath hit the microphone and then dwell in his ears, and suddenly he remembers what he’s doing, like being thrust into the sea, completely back into routine. He blinks, and then again, and more, pushing the image away, away, for later.

He swallows, eyes floating to the complete opposite side of the crowd.

God, how he hoped later would come.

 

 

 

Crisp ocean air hits his lungs, and it feels like a broken home.

He had so many memories of the beach. Growing up, here in this city, and on the east coast of the continent immediately west…

The waves were always going to be welcoming in some way. The memories were all tainted now, like looking at beloved photographs smeared with dirt. Or blood. And if it was anyone’s blood, Ryan very well knew it wasn’t his own.

But he knew he had spilled it.

The sun and sea meet, two opposing horizons bleeding together as the sun died. Colors grew in intensity, and for once Ryan saw it not as a fading out, but as a swift smothering. He’d always found sunset to be an agonizing beauty, pain growing with as time did, but now it seemed ephemeral, so impossibly short. A matter of minutes, and it was gone. Maybe he had just needed a few more years behind his heels for minutes to feel like seconds. Or maybe he’d just needed more agony for this to seem wholly beautiful.

He breathes deeply, letting the salt swirl in his lungs. This was a broken home, and he’d been its ruination. And he knew it was beyond repair by this year in his life.

“Ryan?”

Bloods swims in his ears. He knew who it was.

“Why did you invite me here?”

Brendon’s wearing the backstage pass Ryan had mailed to him, but he’d never come used it.

Ryan fights to keep the air in his lungs so he can speak.

“I needed to see you again.”

Brendon takes a step closer, the distance somewhere between amiable and cold. “And you thought here, of all places?”

Ryan swallows. “Yes.”

Brendon’s eyes search Ryan’s briefly, and he looks toward the sea. “Are you single now?”

Again, but maybe more timid: “Yes.”

Brendon’s eyes float back. “Me too.”

Something in Ryan’s chest skips and stutters.

Brendon takes another step forward, and Ryan’s jaw clenches. “Did you want me back? Is this all some sort of huge romantic gesture?”

The words are dense in Ryan’s ears, but they’re not bitter, just curious. It’s just enough for his own words to slip past his teeth. A large breath in, and then:

“I’m sorry for what I did here all those years ago. You didn’t deserve it; I didn’t know what I wanted. And now I do. Now I know it’s all I’ve ever wanted and what I need.”

On the tip of his tongue, the top of his lungs, squeaking through on bated breath: “I love you.”

Brendon steps back, hands on his head. “Jesus, Ryan. What is this? What are you doing? What makes you think you have the right?”

Ryan’s face burns, jaw hanging open just enough to let the ocean air hit his lungs with full force, and he coughs. “I—I just—I didn’t know what to do—”

“And you thought this was right? You thought this was the best way to go about it?”  Brendon’s fingers grip the pass around his neck. “Jesus Christ, Ryan, why don’t you ever try picking up a fucking phone once in a while? If you really felt like this, why did you have to let it boil into something like this?”

Ryan swallows, and his chest is impossibly tight. “I’m sorry, Brendon.”

Brendon grimaces at hearing his name in Ryan’s mouth. “Do you really think you can bring back to life what you killed, Ryan? You fucking murdered whatever we shared. You buried it in this beach, under our own feet. Do you think you can exhume it and act like it’s _fine_? What the fuck, man!” Brendon rips off the pass, but he doesn’t throw it. He holds it in his hand, crumpling it, destroying it softly.

He takes a step closer to Ryan, and in any other circumstance it would have been an invitation to romance. Ryan blinks back tears, his throat tight, his lungs shallow.

“If you get to leave me in Cape Town, so do I.”

His voice is low, soft, on just enough air for Ryan to hear. And every single syllable feels like a sucker punch.

Brendon drops the pass as he turns, and doesn’t look back. It takes all of three seconds of hesitation for Ryan to pick it up. It’s corners are folded, gritty with sand, plastic wrap wrinkled. And even though he can’t breathe and he bites his lip to keep the tears restrained, he puts it in his pocket, folding the lanyard inside. Out of sight, maybe out of mind, but he’ll be damned if it’s out of heart.

The beach is dark now, the sun having been swallowed by the sea. If he had ever thought the sunset was agony, he was completely erroneous. Now it was nothing short of pure, unadulterated beauty. By comparison, it could only be pretty. By comparison, nothing could ever be agonizing again.


End file.
